Vicissitude
by Ninjagrrl
Summary: Schwarz has fallen, and new threats arise from Eszet. Nagi, Farfarello and Tot deal with the aftermath of the tower incident. AU.
1. Chapter 1

Vicissitude

Author's Notes- I was working on a Tot fic and another about Nagi and Farfarello carrying on alone after losing the rest of Schwarz, but both dealt with the same thing- the aftermath of teammate deaths. Some careful squashing together and recycling of interesting plots from another dead fic I had lying around, and it seems to make for a better story. Constructive criticism welcome!

Although Tot probably _won't _be involved in a relationship (in case anyone is horrified and disgusted by the inclusion of a girl in a Weiss fic), I don't claim to know what's going to come out of my head. It could potentially be any possible combination, and anything from friendship all round to a hardcore porny OT3, except with no hardcore porn and probably no OT3 either.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts, this is non-profit and no copyright infringement is intended.

Warnings- Character death, violence, possibly het, definitely slash and perhaps both.

- - -

The sea was beautiful tonight.

It was a shame that the only one watching it was Farfarello, who did not appreciate this sort of quiet natural beauty. He found nature most beautiful when it was at its cruellest- hunting and the ensuring dismemberment, the slow reduction of an exquisite, working machine to nothing but scattered spare parts. There was no sign of life out there, the only movement from dark glassy waves slowly smashing themselves to fragments on the jagged edge of the beach he overlooked, and reforming again with the next tide to wash over them. The sky was a moody, muddy grey before the sun had set, and now lay low and oppressively dark above black heaving waters. It looked almost opaque out by the horizon, as though one could walk out there and chase the sunset without falling into the treacherous depths they all knew existed. It was a dark night and he knows from experience that the water out there is cold, deep. Even the thin starlight and the haze from the city lights wouldn't reach where Schuldig lay.

Usually, corpses floated to the surface within a few days when the buoyant gases forming in the torso balanced out the weight in the sodden lungs, where delicate alveoli float like fronds of seaweed in the water. There would be no water in Schuldig's lungs to weigh him down either; he had been dead and bled out before he was thrown into the water. But Farfarello had tethered him to the sea floor with chains and weights, and there Schuldig would stay until the creatures down there scattered him to a jigsaw bone puzzle and freed him once again.

He sifted dry sand and dug down to where it was damp and salty, and crumbled a handful, nothing but rocks and shells and bones ground to dust. The sea assimilates everything in time. When enough years have passed, a child walking along this beach may find a bleached bit of bone to go with the sea shells and driftwood and dried knotted seaweed they collect, a piece of the skull that had once cradled Schuldig's mind.

Farfarello came back to the beach nightly. It was a long walk from the Schwarz apartment, two hours there and another two back, but there was nothing else to fill his time since tower and team had fallen. By the time he started visiting, a week had passed and the place was no longer roped off with yards of fluttering yellow tape. They had already removed the debris and corpses from the tower, they being either the police, Eszet or Kritiker. He didn't care who had covered it up, just so long as they had left this place alone now. Most people did. If there had been visitors before that incident, then they stayed away now. There were no families paddling in the shallows by day, no dog walkers, no teenage couples walking hand-in-hand along moonlit sands, or skinny dipping in the waters where somewhere, Schuldig drifted at the ends of his chains.

Nagi had done his best to keep them all safe in the split-second he had to act. Crawford and Schuldig had fallen safely to the water under his telekinetic shield, and Farfarello had felt the gift grab at him tentatively, too far away and stretched too thin to do much. He had tried, but Nagi had known that the drop and the falling debris would be unlikely to kill Farfarello. Injured, yes, from that height the impact against the water alone could break bones. It hadn't, but plenty had snapped and cracked as the tower had crumbled and came down on top of them.

When he'd surfaced, Nagi and Crawford were nowhere to be seen. Schuldig still floated amongst the debris, uninjured but not conscious. He looked vulnerable then, as he never did before, the brazen orange of his damp hair muted to a sober dark red in the water. Schuldig had a hard, clever face designed for spite and malice, always smirking, too sharp to be considered handsome and never softening even in sleep. But there had been a faintly unhappy look then, like a child caught up in a nightmare, and that had been the first sign that something was wrong.

Farfarello took Schuldig back to the Schwarz apartment, alone, and the others had never returned. The cup of tea that Crawford had half-finished remained unwashed at the side of the sink, evaporated to leave a gummy layer of syrup and then grew white mould, while his neatly folded newspaper yellowed where it lay. Nagi's computer was still turned on, the screensaver drawing endless multicoloured loops and swirls and humming quietly until someone cut the electricity to the place on the fifth day. To a casual eye, the place was a modern Mary Celeste, the occupants disappearing unaware in the middle of their everyday lives. Farfarello knew better. He knew Crawford and the equally careful, thoughtful Nagi would have left behind nothing incriminating, no personal correspondence left unshredded, no computer files left intact. The only things here were meaningless personal possessions bought in their stay in Japan- clothes, toiletries, electronics and groceries. The police could take this place apart and find nothing truly of value.

Schuldig had remained unconscious for most of the first day, and beyond that he would sleep no more unless Farfarello sedated him heavily, first with homemade cocktails of tranquillisers, sleeping pills and antipsychotics, mixing all of the medications that Schwarz had thrived on to find something that would keep him under for more than an hour or two, and towards the end he had kept him on morphine almost permanently.

On the first day, Schuldig woke up screaming. Usually Schuldig's eyes were both cold and bright, blazing blue like the focused flame at the tip of a blow torch, but when he woke up this time there was no sense in them at all. Farfarello had never seen an insane telepath before, but he knew it happened when their mental shields went down. Humans produce a great deal of white noise. There are anxieties, neuroses, regrets and other preoccupations running on constant loops, clips of memories and snatches of songs playing constantly to fill the mental silence that most dread and a telepath would kill for. They constantly rehearse their plans for the future and analyse actions from the past, they keep up a steady commentary of their own actions, and juggle a constant dizzying flow of information from the world around them and their long term memories, flowing back into and out of their current train of thought. Schuldig had told Farfarello once that most of those people who looked at them strangely were only a few thoughts away from madness themselves, that it took very little to push a person into insanity. He'd done it a few times just to illustrate his point.

Without anything to guard them against this, telepaths didn't typically last very long. It was a constant, dizzying mental assault as they simultaneously lived a thousand lives until they couldn't separate their own thoughts from the static around them and they took on the neuroses and fears of everyone around. It could very quickly destroy a telepath's identity, push them into insanity or simply overload their mind from a constant mental onslaught.

On the second day, Schuldig blinded himself in his left eye to try and stop himself from seeing something that was only ever inside his head, and Farfarello wondered if it was one of his own thoughts that had played over and over until Schuldig couldn't tell what was real any more. On the third day, he managed to get further than usual before the pain from the headache dropped him, far enough to break a mirror and try to slash his wrists. It was a poor, messy job and Farfarello thought that with all the time Schuldig had spent in his mind, he should have acquired a finer knowledge of human anatomy and which arteries to cut for rapid, fatal bloodloss. But then the screaming assault in his own head had probably drowned out most of his old memories by now and lost them under the lives of another thousand people. Farfarello bandaged him back up and waited to see if the tranquillisers would kill him on top of the blood loss, but Schuldig continued to wake up every two hours for the next four days, fifty more doses of mixed medications that did less and less as time passed.

On the fifth day, something began to rupture as fragile blood vessels gave way under the mental overload. The first sign was a nosebleed and Farfarello turned him onto his side so that he wouldn't choke on any of the blood that might run back down his throat. By evening, two more bright bloody patches had appeared in his remaining eye, tiny crimson and scarlet bursts like fireworks in a white sky. He waited again, but none of the haemorrhages seemed to be fatal.

On the seventh day, Farfarello killed Schuldig himself.

The screaming, senseless thing upstairs no longer resembled Schuldig, and by now it was obvious the damage was done. His shields had fallen for good and he couldn't claw his way back from under the ruin that had became his own mind. Farfarello went back upstairs and waited for a second to see if Schuldig recognised his presence, but it was just another mental assault for the telepath to cope with and it brought only pain. He thought about simply using up the remaining morphine and sending Schuldig to sleep permanently, but it seemed right that the telepath should die by his own hand. Farfarello's knife went between two vertebrae straight into the brain stem, and then it was all over within seconds. Schuldig had probably expected a more violent end. Most in this line of business did.

He dropped the corpse in the sea, remembering one time that they'd gone down to the bay and watched hysterical teenagers discover the floating, swollen carnage from a night of slaughter three days ago. The sea wasn't kind to corpses. They didn't drift peacefully as people liked to imagine, hair floating around a chilled white marble face turned up to the stars. For one, they almost inevitably floated face-down and for another, they bloated and changed colour and fish nibbled away at their eyes and soft tissues. If they stayed down there too long, their flesh changed to a soapy white wax known as adipocere. "When I die," Schuldig had said, his eyes sparkling with a malicious sort of mirth as he watched them screaming at the find. "I hope someone throws me in the ocean,"

And that was where he lay now. But Farfarello had taken him out far enough and weighed him down so that he wouldn't float back to shore. He would have preferred to bury him, perhaps a lingering memento from his Catholic days when they were told that the dead would one day rise again from their graves while Schuldig was left bound to the ocean floor with the small, simple sea creatures that God wouldn't bother to pass judgement upon. But the soil around the beach was loose and sandy, only held together by the roots of thin salty grasses, and he wondered if the thoughts of others might still filter down to where Schuldig lay. Nothing would reach him out there. His mind would be broken down and scattered by the strange crawling things at the bottom of the sea, his empty skull filled with cold black ocean water and dreamless now.

Farfarello did not mourn, precisely. He didn't feel sorrow in quite the same way that most people did, not since his family had died and his mind had broke, but there was something a little raw and aching when he thought about Schuldig. More than anything, he felt displaced. Since leaving the asylum, Schuldig had always been a constant presence in his life and in his mind. He had walked brazenly into the cell one day, unarmed and completely alone and removed Farfarello's straitjacket without any trace of fear. Someone like that must be either very brave, very dangerous or clinically insane, and in Schuldig's case, probably all three. Farfarello had been interested enough to follow him out then, and he had followed him ever since.

He didn't even feel any hatred. A part of him recognised that God had let Schuldig go and messily too, his mind tearing apart under the gift He had given him. But he couldn't summon up any anger about it. The poison that had driven him for years was suddenly drained and left only emptiness, no relief, and he missed it. However twisted and misguided, it had given him purpose. He had found solace in religion as a child, and found it again in the murder of priests, in the open red puzzle of corpses that held no answers in death or in life.

He stabbed a knife over and over into the thin soil, thoughtfully, switching hands every so often. It would blunt it, but Farfarello didn't care. He'd taken it from a would-be mugger a few nights ago. It was a poorly-balanced, cheap blade, but he took it because it had been there, just as he had routinely took the man's life because he was there, not because he felt any particular joy in it any more. There was an empty space behind him where Schuldig should have been watching, smirking, alternately switching between their minds to share Farfarello's joy and take his own pleasure in the victim's confused, dying thoughts. _Schadenfreude_, they called it in his own language.

There was a presence approaching now. They travelled soundlessly, but he could feel someone or perhaps two of them coming up behind him. He didn't know whether a slight hyperawareness of his surroundings was part of his gift or just something uniquely him, but Farfarello didn't care either way. He could simply tell that they were there, that they were young, even more so than himself, but there was an unusual strength about them.

"What are you, Greyfriars Bobby?" A soft monotone voice said, barely stirring the night air any more than the faint breeze. Farfarello understood the reference, but wasn't offended. He only resumed fiddling with his knife and wondered why Nagi hadn't referred to the more familiar Hachiko. They'd all seen the statue one time, and Schuldig had delighted in telling some of the children who flocked to it that Hachiko probably only returned because the locals had fed him and not out of misplaced loyalty towards the memory of a dead master.

"Tot felt him go. She's.. she seems to have some telempathic abilities,"

If she was an empath, then she had been a broken one. There was an extra strength that arose from her now. It was tentative and unfamiliar to her, and might destroy her yet. It didn't remind him of the telempaths he had known before either.

"Oracle is gone,"

Farfarello understood the difference in Nagi's tone between how Schuldig had gone and how Crawford had gone, and perhaps it would have been easier for Nagi to take if Crawford had died rather than left them behind. He'd known that Oracle would leave, as soon as everything went wrong and they went crashing into the ocean among the debris of the falling tower. He didn't blame him either. It was simply the way that Crawford was. They had failed and he had cut his losses and got out before Eszet or Kritiker further complicated matters.

"He brought you to shore first," Farfarello said, finally. Small, battered and knocked out from the strain of using his gift, Nagi would have never made it to the beach relying only on the mercy of the tides. He wasn't sure whether it would help if Nagi knew that their leader had taken him to safety first before leaving them all there. But Nagi would know that the most practical thing for Crawford to do would be to methodically shoot him before he woke up, and leave no witnesses to the tower incident alive.

He can hear Tot shifting uneasily, not comfortable in his presence, and wonders what it took for Nagi to bring her back from the dead. She had undoubtably died. Farfarello had a surgeon's precise eye for anatomy and he had struck to kill this time. Schuldig had found it amusing to feel her mind snuffed out of existence, baffled, confused and hurting. Contrary to popular opinion, many people feel little fear or sorrow when they died a sudden violent death. There simply isn't time for them to comprehend what's going on and come to terms with the end of their existence before the shock or bloodloss gets to them. Schuldig had found it even funnier when he felt her come _back_ some time after Schwarz had fled the mansion. Farfarello wondered briefly what would happen if Nagi brought back Schuldig. He'd never be able to free himself from the chains anyway. By now his corpse would have swollen and the links would be embedded in his flesh.

He stabbed down again without looking, and this time the knife went through his other hand and would have pinned it to the ground like a butterfly if the loose soil was strong enough to cling to the blade. Farfarello looked down dispassionately, and jerked the knife free. He could feel everything except the pain- flesh parting, the sand-encrusted blade grating against bone as it came free and the blood welling up to wash away the grit and dust. It had severed his lifeline abruptly, about a quarter of the way down.

He finally glanced around, but could see little of them in the dim light. Tot hung as far back as she could with her hand linked with Nagi's. Her whole posture spoke of mistrust and unease, ready to bolt at any second. But however unwillingly, she had still came and that was the only important thing.

"Come back with us," Nagi said. His voice was emotionless as ever. He spoke only of practicality, of keeping an insane and potentially useful teammate safely out of the way. Farfarello thought that maybe Nagi had cared somewhat about Crawford, if only because the clairvoyant had taken him from the streets and made him who he was today, but beyond that Nagi didn't bother caring about other people any more. He certainly hadn't cared much for Schuldig who disliked most people on principle and could be casually, thoughtlessly cruel because it entertained him. Nagi didn't show any expression now either- no pity, no sympathy, no sorrow. The dim night light drained him of any colour, but his eyes were always strangely flat anyway. He held Tot's hand, but whether it was to comfort her or anchor her, Farfarello couldn't tell.

"They'll find the Schwarz apartment soon enough," Nagi said, by way of explanation. "It's not safe to be there,"

Farfarello was neither suicidal nor particularly attached to life. He never had felt strongly either way. He existed simply because that was the way things were, and while he'd sometimes taken stupid risks that should have killed him, he had never sought death deliberately. Schuldig's death hadn't changed that. He didn't fear Eszet or Kritiker finding him, but neither was he particularly attached to the place, not any more. Farfarello was too well acquainted with death to continue holding the usual sentiments towards resting places and human remains, to hold a vigil by something that was no longer anything but disintegrating bone, flesh, minerals.

He stood, and walked after Tot and Nagi without a backward glance at the ocean.


	2. Chapter 2

Vicissitude

Author's Notes- This fic has eaten my head at the moment, kind of awkward considering how much else I have to work on at the moment. Even though there's not exactly much interest, I've got so much of it lying around that I put up some more anyway.

There's also a couple of inaccuracies since I wrote this while I was at home and didn't have my DVDs. I accidentally wrote Schuldig as killing Schon, and since that made its way into a couple of scenes it would be tricky to rewrite. I also wrote Tot as being 'dead' for at least an hour or two and partly buried with wreckages, which may be a slight dramatisation /

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - -

Nagi's apartment was unimpressive, but practical for someone looking to disappear into anonymity. He rented it furnished and paid cash on time each month. Tot had been posed as an older sister stuck raising her brother through his last two years of compulsory schooling after their mother had left the country with a new boyfriend. Not enough of a sob story for the landlord to get too interested, and just enough to keep things awkward and make sure he refrained from asking too many questions. None of their neighbours were interested in who they were or where they had came from. Tot never left the apartment and Nagi had a gift for fading into the background when he wanted to.

There were only two bedrooms, but no one used the empty living room and Farfarello took it. There was a filmy layer of dust over the TV screen and the single, scarred coffee table wasn't marked by rings of spilled tea or stacked with newspapers and correspondence. The thin curtains had remained drawn since they had signed the contract, and when he opened them, more dust motes danced golden in the hall light, the view nothing more than the grey wall of an identical building almost close enough to touch. It was clear that no one had used this room since the previous occupants. Tot and Nagi kept out of each others way, only meeting awkward and silent as they passed between their separate rooms and the kitchen or bathroom.

"Here," Nagi said, appearing soundlessly in the doorway. He dropped a first aid kit on the sofa and indicated Farfarello's injured hand before leaving, closing the door silently behind him. Farfarello wound a bandage around it to keep it from staining anything, but didn't bother to clean the wound first. There were a few small noises around the apartment, doors opening and shutting, a tap running and lights clicking on and off, and then silence as they fell asleep separately, without talk.

- - -

Tot dreams.

The room she is in now is nothing like the room she used to have, the room of a girl less than half her age. Masafumi had indulged her and let her live as she pleased, and Schon and Hell had helped her decorate whenever a new whim took her. Her walls had been candystriped pastel pink and white and hung with paintings of fairytale scenes, all the princesses and knights and unicorns, and none of the dragons or witches. She had filled the room with pretty, impractical furniture and an enormous, four poster bed hung with wispy curtains barely more substantial than air. Tot had liked to surround herself with layers of sugary frills and spun lace, to wrap herself up in a flower-patterned blanket in a pile of cushions and stuffed animals in the safe pink cavern of her room. Nagi can't afford anything like that just yet. He had been surreptitiously leeching money from the Schwarz accounts for months and investing it, buying things to sell on, changing account after account. It had switched constantly from numbers on a computer screen to piles of hard cash, from stocks and shares to some physical investment piled in a warehouse, all so that the trail became cold long ago if anyone tried to follow up on it. He can't access very much of it at the moment, and so the flat they have now is sparse and bare. She doesn't mind too much. Once Tot would fear a place with white empty walls and thin grey curtains and nothing to cover all the empty space. But now she dreams, and goes back to the cherry trees in her sleep.

_I'll be waiting.._

Tot smooths down her pretty clothes, all tattered and torn as she dragged herself from the smoking wreckage of her home. Luckily, it wasn't one of her best outfits. Her daddy let her fill up entire wardrobes, so many clothes that when Hell threw out some to make space, she'd never even notice. This was an unusual choice for Tot, sleek and hugging her slim, toned figure. Usually she likes puffed dresses, knee-length skirts frothing with lace and tulle, blouses buttoned up to the neck. She'd seen the uncomfortable look on Hell's face when she'd chosen this one, an outfit she'd never have picked before meeting Nagi.

She knows she must look terrible now. Her clothes are ruined and stiff with her own dried blood. Her hair is disheveled and she pulled it away from her face in a messy ponytail because it smells like smoke and fire, and she doesn't want to think about that just yet. Her bare skin is bruised and raw with grazes, and her nails are splintered and broken down to the quick. Tot doesn't even care. She thinks Nagi would like her better this way, not a dressed-up doll any more.

It's pretty here, under the cherry blossom. Tot isn't sure where it is, a park or a private garden maybe. But if she doesn't look too hard, she can pretend they're the cherry trees back in the mansion grounds and that any minute now an exasperated Schon will come out from under that heavy blossom looking for Tot, Schon before Weiss had scarred her pretty face and Schwarz had put a bullet through her chest. The grass isn't clipped and it runs luxuriant through her fingers when she brushes her hands through it and picks daisies to make into chains. She's been here a while now, and there are ropes and ropes of flowers winding round her neck and wrists and waist, here so long that some of the petals have already wilted and died.

Dying was very scary.

She unconsciously brushes her fingertips against the tiny slit in her clothing. Underneath, there's nothing but a tiny white raised spot, as insignificant as an insect bite. Tot has worse scars on her knees and elbows from falling over as a child. But it's still undeniably there, whenever she tries to find another explanation for what had happened back at the mansion. Tot had died. She couldn't clearly recall how things had happened, because there was too much confusion. Schon was dead and Masafumi was gone, and one second she was running blindly up the stairs to confront Schwarz and the next she was cut down in her tracks, falling downstairs with her limbs tumbling lifelessly like one of her dolls.

It didn't even hurt so very much. Tot is no stranger to pain, and the adrenaline had numbed her. For a second, she lay there disorientated and then tried to lift her head to see what was going on, but her body wasn't responding any more. All she could feel from the wound was a tiny, sharp pain every time her heart pulsed, no more painful than a stitch after hard exercise, but then she felt blood washing warm over her with each contraction and knew she was dying. Strange, the thing that saddened her most was seeing how upset Nagi was. It almost looked as though he was crying, but Tot couldn't see any more. Her own eyes were blurring up and the world beginning to slide out of focus. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that she had been dead for a very long time anyway, but the words didn't come. None of that romantic nonsense, no tearful speeches or heartfelt whisperings or confessions, just a few clumsy words that took her forever to shape.

They're all gone now.

A stray breeze whips through the cherry blossom and a shower of petals dance around her like butterflies, whispering silky smooth against her skin. She looks around without thinking, but Tot is alone and it's nothing but the wind this time. He came for her once, like this, when Neu had died. Hell and Schon and Neu. She keeps forgetting about it and letting the thought drift away with the cherry blossoms, and play pretend once again, but Tot thinks that perhaps now she can cope with it. She is an assassin and well acquainted with death, but it's different when it's Neu choking her life out on a loop of wire, Schon's lovely face distorted with pain, Hell cradling Masafumi until the world came down around her.

Did Nagi die?

She chews her lip, uncomfortable. When Tot woke up, she didn't even think about Nagi. It was horrible. She remembers nothing about what happened after she died, but she remembers her mind slowly awakening and trapped in the lifeless organic cage of a corpse. Tot could feel everything- her limbs stiffening like doll parts, her brain beginning the slow process of breaking down back into its components, fluids beginning to settle and turn to gel in her veins. She would have screamed and screamed until her voice was gone, but the message was lost somewhere in a tangle of dead nerve fibres that didn't respond any more. Then the changes had began to occur, painfully slow. Her blood began to flow again, sluggishly, cells separating from where they had settled in clumps in her veins. She could feel a small blush of warmth slowly spreading through her chilled flesh, her tiny heart thumping irregularly under the will of someone else. At last her lips had parted and she gasped for air.

She hadn't thought about anything once she awoke, not Nagi, not Schon or Hell. She clawed her way out from under the ruins, her nails breaking and bending backwards as she scrabbled desperately at stone and wood with bleeding, skinless fingertips. There was no air down there and she breathed in dust and ashes, and choked them back out as she dragged herself painfully from the wreckage and finally lay out in the air, weak and trembling. Her stiffening muscles slowly began to unknot and fill with warmth, until she could stand unsteadily, as awkward as a newborn foal. The only thing in her newly awakened mind was to escape and she had limped slowly away, confused and hurting.

_I'll protect you_

Tot doesn't need protecting. Tot is an assassin. Her daddy took her in and by the time he was through teaching her, no one could ever hurt her again. And yet, this strange boy, two years younger and three inches shorter than her had sworn he would protect her. She clasped her hands together. She could kill him so easily. Nagi is safe, small and vulnerable. There's a lot of power locked away inside his head, but she knows he would never turn that on her.

Tot slips back out of REM sleep, and her dreams disintegrate into a whirl of cherry blossom petals.

- - -

Nagi dreams, most nights.

His dreams are the only place where he really loses control, and they leave him faintly uncomfortable when he wakes up, sometimes with cooling tears caught like diamonds in his eyelashes and shattering as he blinks them away. Crying feels unfamiliar to him now. Nagi has practised the art of locking everything up tight until his feelings crystallised and turned to nothing but cool, complete disregard for everything. Or so he thought. A slight frown crosses his face momentarily. Nagi always played his cards close to his chest and planned each and every move, but Tot is an unknown factor, a wild card in this game he found himself playing.

He had watched countless people lose their lives to Schwarz and never felt anything before. Living on the streets had taught him this brutal philosophy, that in the end everyone stood alone and that if you could not keep your own life, then you had no right to it. He had learned that his own safety could only be guaranteed by the sight of a target crushed and broken on the floor, by street gutters running red with blood. He had witnessed the deaths of both assassins and civilians, men, women and children. He had seen Schuldich and Farfarello wreak havoc on those who could not possibly defend themselves, for no reason other than their own entertainment, and he felt nothing. He had personally killed a harmless, middle-aged businessman who had done Schwarz no harm except to own some investment they required and probably could have acquired by other, more tiresome means. He felt no regret, not even when the man's dying spasms knocked the family photos from his desk, three children and a wife, five lives destroyed with a single thought from Nagi's inexplicable mind. Life was unfair.

He hadn't cared about any of the other Schrient members, and if Crawford had given the word, he would have finished them in any way their leader had pleased. He didn't care for Hell's sharp mind, for Schon's beauty, for Neu's tragic little psychodrama. They were nothing to him. Nagi had slipped up, and he won't let it happen again. He'll keep his promise to Tot and keep her with him, away from any dangers they may undoubtedly attract, but it goes no further than that. He let himself care about her, only to see her cut down in front of him.

Sometimes when he sleeps, everything slips and he's back on the street.

The scene is always the same. It's no street in particular. The street of his nightmares is an amalgamation of every street he has ever known, but the alleys are darker and deeper and there's always broken glass in the gutter and sirens in the air. Everything seems slightly surreal and all the proportions are wrong. The buildings stretch to the skies and every window is black and broken, the people all loom over him and their expressions are grotesque exaggerations like Greek theatrical masks. It's how his child-self remembers things.

It's always night too. Day brought its own problems, either laughter or pitying looks, and he hates both equally. At least the people who talk about him come out and say it. They don't murmur false sympathy and then look the other way, knowing the child they pity could be dead in an alley the next morning. But night is when the drunks and drug addicts are out, and no one around to hear a thin, lost scream in the middle of all the city noise. There's always the sound of heavy rain running down gutters, and then his memories with Schwarz fade away and he remembers skinning knees running away, hiding behind the thin shelter of a few cardboard boxes soft with rain and watching neon lights swim in puddles as he struggles to control the strange, surging force inside his own head.

But not tonight. Another loose end has been tied up and the Berserker has been found. His face relaxes momentarily in sleep as the streets break up and fade away before they've properly formed, and in the morning, he does not remember dreaming. Of course, it must have occurred. Anyone watching would have seen the signs of REM sleep, his breathing become lighter and faster and tiny movements flickering under his eyelids, but they were shallow and meaningless dreams that slipped away easily and formed no memories.

- - -

Farfarello dreams too.

The dreams are as erratic as his thought usually are and they leap around between space and time, but they always take him back to the tower's fall in the end. They start as the floor begins to crumble and break up, and the most frightening part is seeing that for once, Brad Crawford looks completely taken aback. Crawford was never shocked. He built his plans for the future in layers, laying down safeguard after safeguard. There were no wild cards or uncontrolled factors in Crawford's games, not until this time when the world around them began to buckle and cave in on itself, and everyone was plunged into madness.

Farfarello had hit the water awkwardly and went straight under. It took him a while to surface from the vortex down there, the foaming water filled with corpses and crumbling foundations and the living being dragged down with it. He struggled out of the madness over and over again, and never got there in time before Schuldig's mind snapped to see what happened.

The dreams break up and reform, over and over. As Farfarello slips in and out of REM sleep they start again and flash between the past, the tower and the following days, and Schuldig's face goes back and forward into and out of ruin.

"Hello, Farfarello,"

The madness briefly ceases and Schuldig's image flickers for a moment, then settles. He looks as he did not so long ago, just before they left for the tower incident. A little tired, with dark smudges under his eyes and paler than usual from the work it took to pull their plot off, but unharmed. There's a faint touch of colour in his skin from a still-beating heart, and both eyes are there, as bright and focused as ever.

Schuldig looks alive, but his kiss is thin and brackish and as cold as the ocean.

"Sorry," Schuldig says, touching his lip thoughtfully. There's still a small scab there from a cold sore he had just before the tower incident. It's not some image generated from all Farfarello's jumbled memories, an amalgamation of every memory he has, but Schuldig exactly as he was less than three weeks ago. "I can't remember the taste of anything but saltwater down there,"

"You're dead," He says, and remembers.

"Yeah, I noticed that too. Well, I'm here and that's the important thing," Schuldig says, unmoved. "Now listen. They've sent people after you,"

"Eszet?"

"Who else?" Schuldig shrugs. "No one in Eszet has followers who were loyal to the end, not even the Elders. But there are plenty there who would take advantage of the chaos to seize power for themselves, and Schwarz are a threat to them. The Oracle might win over the remainder yet, but-"

"How did they know?" Because surely Brad Crawford wouldn't go up to the remains of the organisation to tell them what happened, and all the witnesses that matter were drowned. Weiss may have crawled from that wreckage too, but even if they run to their masters, Kritiker would keep it to themselves. If there are traitors in Eszet, it only benefits Kritiker if the organisation ruins itself from the inside without ever knowing who brought them down.

Schuldig's smile is thin and bitter. "They had a safeguard, Far. They never really trusted us-"

Schuldig was cut off abruptly. His sharp, fox-like features began to swell, turning white and shapeless. His brilliant blue eyes disappear between blinks, nothing there now but something small and and tentacled curled up in the ruins of his brain.

"Do you like it?" A childish voice pipes up.

"Who are you?" Farfarello asks. Schuldig was still trying to speak, but there was seaweed tethering his jaws together and water had flooded his mouth and left his lungs stuck together like sodden tissue paper.

She appears, smoothing down a tattered white dress that looks more like some kind of nightgown. He has a feeling she is much older than she looks, but something has stunted her growth and she looks like a child forever now. Under the flimsy dress, she is little more than skeletal. Her hair is colourless and flows like seaweed, and when she looks up he sees her eyes are clouded white and sightless. Something is subtly wrong about every facial feature, everything slightly unformed.

"I am fear," She says.

"Then you'll have to try harder," Farfarello says indifferently, glancing over her handiwork. He would never fear Schuldig, however he appeared. "You're just a mad telepath, aren't you?"

She giggles, but it's brittle and mirthless. "He's right, you know. You're in trouble,"

"We killed the elders," Farfarello agreed. "I was talking to Schuldich. Go away,"

An angry look crosses her face, and suddenly everything shatters around him.

- - -

He woke up abruptly, thrown straight from the middle of the dream and back into the dry, empty little living room in Nagi's flat.

There were three things wrong. Firstly, there was no Schuldig there. He was still used to the telepath sprawled lazily over wherever he pleased. Schuldig might have enemies everywhere, but he slept as though he didn't have a care in the world, in an untidy tangle of long limbs and loose hair. It was deceptive. Farfarello had seen how quickly Schuldig would come awake at an unfamiliar noise.

Secondly, the wall in front of him was a nicotine-stained off-white and not the bland cream of the expensive apartment Schwarz had rented. The air had a dry, unused scent like carpet cleaner and air freshener. Their apartment had a smell that was something between the coffee Crawford and Nagi had lived on, Crawford's expensive aftershave and a hint of cigarette smoke from Schuldig. The furniture was unfamiliar too. If Farfarello woke up in his own room, there was none there now. If he woke up in Schuldig's, there were his own few possessions amongst all the junk Schuldig collected, piles of books he would never read, obnoxiously bright clothes thrown over every surface, expensive electrical gadgets he got bored with and left on the floor until they were broken.

And third, the wound in his palm was infected. It was an unfamiliar sensation to him. Farfarello could feel all the signs of inflammation except for the pain- the heat and throbbing dilated blood vessels, a slight stiffness in that hand from swelling. He tugged the bandage loose, and a black sandy crust was ripped free with the gauze, exposing a red swollen slit in the centre of his palm. A few drops of clear fluid welled up when he pressed on it experimentally. Lymph fluid, some already dried to a white crust around the wound.

He was familiar with signs of infection, just never in himself. Farfarello was a vitakinetic. Theoretically, it could be a useful gift. Rosenkreuz had spoken excitedly of almost instantaneous healing powers, of enhanced strength and regenerating from perhaps only a certain percentage of his original cells, of the ability to turn the gift on others to hurt or to heal. But like most gifts, it didn't work that way at all. It was erratic and under no conscious control. Sometimes he'd survive supposedly fatal wounds. On one memorable occasion he'd been flattened by a truck and Schuldig had later sworn it had gone over his head ("I felt you _go_,"). A few seconds later and he was on the floor with the truck a few metres away, getting up unsteadily as the worst of the fractures knitted themselves together in seconds so he could get away before it returned. Maybe it had gone over his head. There had been a lot of things suddenly crunching and snapping, and he couldn't tell where they all where.

Other times, a simple cut could remain raw and open for days, and weeks before the scar would fade. Sometimes they didn't go at all. His eye had never healed and there were numerous scars that had never disappeared. Crawford hypothesised he had some sort of mental block regarding them, and that he could heal them if he wanted to. Farfarello didn't care whether they were there or not.

He went into the kitchen. Nagi was already there.

"Schuldig said there's someone after us," Farfarello said. There were three cups laid out ready. They were an interesting choice. Practical and unsentimental, Nagi should have picked up a pack of four matching cups that were neither cheap and gaudy, nor too expensive. Instead, they were all different and probably picked from a 100 yen store. There was a tall coffee glass almost identical to Crawford's, a brightly coloured patterned mug like the one Schuldig had favoured, a black cup as Nagi had always used, and the fourth was fairly similar to one Farfarello had usually picked.

"Schuldig is dead," Nagi said wearily. He could see the telekinetic mentally making a note to get Farfarello back on anti-psychotics.

"I know," Farfarello took a seat and pulled his cup over towards himself. "He looked it too,"

Nagi looked up at that, opened his mouth as though about to comment, and shut it again. He went back to telekinetically typing out something on his laptop, forehead creased with concentration and then his eyes flickered back up. "What happened to your hand?"

"Knife," Farfarello said.

"I know that," A tiny sign of irritation crossed Nagi's face. "Why is it infected? That's never happened before,"

Farfarello turned his hand back over and pressed down on the infected site, and shrugged. He watched another round, pearly bead of lymph fluid rise up and the sides of the split parted, revealing the angry red insides.

"There was someone else with Schuldig," He said. "Eszet?"

"You didn't go out last night, did you?" Nagi rubbed his temples as though easing an oncoming headache, and waited for Farfarello's nod to confirm it. "Then there was _no one there._ Take care of your hand,"

Farfarello wasn't offended. He dabbed at the remainder of the scab, dug out a few grains of glittering sand from the edge of the wound and then doused it in antiseptic and rebandaged it, watching Nagi all the time. The boy looked more like Crawford than ever now, eating with one hand while hard at work with the keys of his laptop rapidly depressing themselves under his gaze. The gunfire sound of typing was suddenly interrupted by a scuffling noise at the door, and then the sound of quickly retreating footsteps.

Nagi put his spoon down impatiently. "Tot," He said. The footsteps paused. "Come in here,"

Tot entered the kitchen reluctantly, her eyes flickering everywhere but to Nagi or Farfarello. Nagi indicated a chair and she crossed the kitchen slowly, like a lamb to the slaughter. She wasn't wearing any of her usual outfits now, just jeans and a top that was far too big for her, her hands fisted in the overly long sleeves. There were dark smudges underneath her eyes and her hair was tied up on top of her head in a messy blue knot.

"No one's going to kill anyone," Nagi said, pouring Tot some tea without looking away from the screen. Black tea, cream, three sugars, no need to ask how she took it. "I've been looking- seeing what we should do next. I thought we should get out of the country, but Eszet and Kritiker will probably be watching the planes. I thought about a ship, but-" He paused, his voice faltering. For a moment, he looked like the fifteen year old he was.

"We'd be trapped," Farfarello said agreeably. You can't keep a plane in the air indefinitely, but if someone alerted them, Eszet could stop a ship coming to shore. There was nowhere to escape from it.

"Exactly," Nagi said, regaining his composure somewhat. He stirred his tea briskly. "The main Schwarz account will be frozen, of course, but both Crawford and myself had a number of other accounts. There's no reason why we can't stay here indefinitely and lay low for a while," He paused, and then looked closer at his screen.

"What is it?" Tot asked.

"A message," Nagi said, the keyboard jumping into life under his outstretched hand, keys clattering away untouched. His voice sounded odd. "I think it's from Crawford,"


	3. Chapter 3

Vicissitude

Author's Notes- Just a few notes about references mentioned here- none of them really need to be known to understand the chapter, but someone might be interested if they're not sure what they refer to.

- The name Demetrius means something like "lover of the earth"

- Spetsnaz just means 'special forces', but outside Russia it refers specifically to Russian special forces. The KGB were secret police/security/intelligence, and the GRU are Russian military intelligence, said to have some of the best special forces in the world

- Farfarello isn't babbling nonsense about scapulas, that is one possible explanation of the name's origin.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts, no profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - -

"I've received a message," Nagi said, and paused while more programs opened themselves and text began to fill the screen. "There's nothing to say who it's from, of course, but I recognise the encryptions used. He invented some of these himself. It's Crawford's style,"

"What does it say?" Tot asked, leaning forward to see and frowning at the senseless gibberish that filled the screen.

"It's a warning," Nagi said slowly. "Eszet have sent a team after us. Crawford thinks most of them might be willing to take us back. After all, if we can fool and defeat the Elders, that makes us the most powerful team they have, and they would undoubtedly have got the top by backstabbing themselves. It's the way Eszet work," He paused. "It sounds like he's trying to persuade some of them to join us against the new Eszet leaders. The _idiot_," His voice sounded anguished.

"I saw one of the team. I think she's a telepath," Farfarello offered again.

"But you said Schuldig was there too," Nagi said, not taking his eyes from the screen as he began tracing the message, already knowing it was useless and would probably be traced back to an internet cafe in China or France or Scotland, somewhere far away from Crawford's actual location. "He couldn't have been. He's dead-"

"It was Schuldig," Farfarello said decisively. He was familiar with his own delusions, and that was not one of them. "I would know if it was him. But if you like, I suppose she could have made me dream that too,"

Nagi looked hopeful at that. "I suppose that's possible. It could be part of a telepath's deception, perhaps drawing on your memories of Schuldig to try to make you lower your guard. What did she say?"

"Nothing," Farfarello said. "Schuldig said something about a safeguard,"

"Right," Nagi said, no longer looking hopeful, his attention back on his computer screen as he resumed decrypting the message. "Well, thanks for your input, Farfarello,"

"You don't mean that," Tot said suddenly, twisting her hands in the sleeves of her oversized top. There was a faintly moody, displeased look in her blue eyes. "You act the same with me. We're both older than you, you know,"

"Age has nothing to do with it, Tot," Nagi rubbed his temples again. He seemed to be permanently on the brink of a migraine these days. "Neither of you have much real life experience. Masafumi always sheltered you and Farfarello is completely insane- no offense meant, Farfarello-"

Farfarello shrugged, unconcerned, and went back to the living room, losing interest in the whole conversation. He could still hear them bickering as he went back down the hallway.

"Well, _I_ believe him! There was someone watching me in my dreams last night-"

"But Schuldig is _dead_, Tot. There's no way he could be there, so if Farfarello dreamed him up, why would she be real either? Schuldig died, and people don't come back,"

Farfarello shut the door behind him, and the noise was cut off. He had barely made it half way across the room when the world began to darken and suddenly swung around him.

- - -

When it cleared, he was no longer in Nagi's flat. He was nowhere at all, just somewhere black and vague and yet to be given form. Farfarello stood up slowly and glanced around the soft, shapeless dark, and wasn't surprised to see that Schuldig was there again.

"Sorry," Schuldig said. He had changed outfit since last time, but otherwise looked exactly the same as he did before the girl had appeared, his features restored again. "I tried to time it as you were walking past the sofa, but I think I missed. Anyway, we need to talk and it's probably safer like this,"

"Why are you here anyway? You died,"

"Most of me did," Schuldig agreed. "But I spent a lot of time here, in your mind. They couldn't get to that part. But there's not very much of it left,"

"They?"

"Look," Schuldig said sharply. "I'm fading. You're not enough to keep me here, and soon I'll be gone," He made a small dismissive gesture, seemingly unmoved by that. "Besides, she keeps silencing me-"

"Why can she do that?"

Schuldig looked frustrated. "She can control me. No, restrict me. And she doesn't want me to say why either. You'll see for yourselves soon enough,"

Farfarello nodded.

"It's no use trying to get out," Schuldig said. "The members who sent a team after you are watching all routes out of the country, and they're willing to bring down an entire plane to get to you, if they have to. Besides, Schwarz know this country and not only do you have resources here, you also have allies, whether they realise it or not. Do you know who I mean?"

"Weiss," Farfarello said slowly.

"Exactly!" Schuldig looked pleased. "Kritiker and Eszet are old enemies. They won't care about helping Schwarz out, but they _will_ care about a sudden increase in Eszet agents in Japan. It's never a good sign now, is it? Eszet don't care if they have to kill off a few civilians to get to Schwarz, and Kritiker won't let that happen"

"Nagi," Farfarello said. "He can tip them off anonymously,"

"Yeah," Schuldig said. "There's not so many of them after you. They've seized power for now, but they have yet to gain loyal followers and if this mission is a massive failure.. well, they'll probably be brought down from the inside. All you three need to do is sit tight and survive that team they've sent out. Let Kritiker waste their agents too,"

"Nagi doesn't believe me," Farfarello said.

"He always was remarkably sceptical for someone working with a clairvoyant, a vitakinetic and a telepath," Schuldig mused. "It's a shame I died so soon. I might have been a good influence on him. He spent far too much time around Crawford. Anyway, you can tell him that two of the team sent after us are codenamed Volt and Orbit. I don't know _her_ name,"

"Do you think he'll believe that?"

"_Ja_. Crawford sent him copies of their Eszet files, encrypted, and he's having trouble working them out. He won't take your word for it, but once he's worked out the cyphers and realised that you're right, he might be more inclined to start taking you seriously,"

There were a lot of questions Farfarello still had to ask, but Schuldig raised his hand.

"She's coming. Better get out now,"

- - -

He woke up in the living room floor with a bruise forming above his eye. Schuldig had indeed timed it wrong, and the coffee table was now on its side. Farfarello padded back towards the kitchen. Nagi and Tot were no longer arguing, but there was a sullen silence between them. Her arms were folded and she was staring at Nagi, who was pointedly refusing to look away from the screen. The keys of Nagi's laptop were rapidly depressing themselves as his eyes flickered back and forward.

"Volt and Orbit," Farfarello said, looking over Nagi's shoulder.

"What?" Nagi said, sounding distracted.

"The Eszet team. Two of them are codenamed Volt and Orbit," Farfarello repeated patiently. "Schuldig doesn't know who the other one is, and she won't let him talk about her anyway," He took his seat again. Nagi didn't look convinced, but he had nothing else to go on. A second later, his head raised and he gave Farfarello an odd look.

"It fits the cypher that Crawford has used. I've got it,"

"Who are they?" Tot asked, her voice still a little subdued and her posture stiff and angry. Farfarello noticed that two of her fingers were still bandaged and splinted together where the nails had been ripped away.

"There's not much information here," Nagi frowned. "It's a copy of Eszet's internal files- they're difficult to get to outside their own systems, but it's a start," He turned the laptop around.There were three members in the unknown team. The photos were small and blurred from being encrypted and reassembled imperfectly, but appeared to show an older looking woman with cropped silver-grey hair, a handsome black man with rather severe features, and the third photo was replaced with a blank white box.

"The woman is codenamed Volt, real name Raissa Ivanovna Pasternak. Russian nationality, age estimated as early fifties. Electrokinetic. Former KGB agent and member of GRU special forces. The other agent is codenamed Orbit, real name Demetrius, surname unknown. Nationality unknown, age given as twenty seven. A gravitakinetic,"

Nagi paused. "There's no information at all on the third member. I'm not too worried about the gravitakinetic- it's rather like a more limited form of telekinesis from what I've heard. I think we can handle that. I _am_ worried about the electrokinetic, especially with her past military experience. And I'm not sure how well telekinesis can block electricity,"

"Schuldig said we should inform Kritiker," Farfarello said with a slow smile. "Let them fight Eszet for us,"

Nagi nodded. "That's not a bad idea. They won't be happy to know Eszet are sending in more teams. I'll send them an anonymous tip-off,"

There wasn't anything else to do for the rest of the day. Tot and Nagi disappeared quietly back into their own rooms, Nagi to work, and Tot to do whatever kept her occupied all these days. Farfarello stayed in the kitchen and sat by the window, listening to the sullen pattering of raindrops on the roof and water washing down the gutters. It was a dull, grey day outside and he was in one of the dark, muddy moods that occasionally took him. Schuldig was generally good at picking up on them and either breaking them up or taking Farfarello out to kill something. But Schuldig was chained to the sea floor, and so no one noticed when Farfarello quietly left the apartment.

- - -

Nagi was still working. He'd decoded all of Crawford's message, but he continued working to trace the origins. He knew very well that it was a waste of his time. Eszet had agents all over the world, and Crawford could be anywhere, trying to talk round any of the many teams they had. If he did find his location, it wasn't as though they could join him anyway. The Oracle had meant to disappear completely, and he would probably remain on the move, never settling for too long in one location. For the second time, he traced the location back to a hospital in Wales, and made a small frustrated noise. But he didn't grudge the work, now he suspected that Crawford had never really abandoned them at all.

There was a timid knock on Nagi's door. He glanced away from the screen for the first time in some hours. "What is it?"

"It's Farfarello," Tot said without opening the door, her voice a little uncertain. "I can't feel him any more,"

Nagi swore and closed his laptop impatiently.

"Stay here," He told her, and left.

It was only mid afternoon and already dim outside, the watery sun trapped behind a thick blanket of steely clouds that hung low over the city. The streets were strangely empty for this time too. There was no one at all outside the apartment, and for a moment he felt a prickle of unease, as though the Eszet team had somehow wiped the entire city of all other people. Nagi was never entirely comfortable wandering the streets alone anyway. The buildings seemed to grow a little taller and he always had the sensation that someone was following him.

Truthfully, Nagi felt like he would always be marked as a victim no matter how much he had proved himself with Schwarz. It had been years before he could use his telekinesis on others to protect himself. Many gifts did not come easily or naturally. Telepathy was likely to turn on the owner and tear their mind apart, and few with that particular gift managed to survive past their teenage years. Pyrokinetics were often burned up in their own fire. And telekinetics like himself were often unable to control the violent surges of power that coursed through them and could rip anything in their path apart. None of the other Schwarz members had ever seemed this way to him. Crawford always seemed so self-assured and completely in control. Schuldig was a master at turning his gift on others to manipulate them and seemed to revel in his abilities. Farfarello didn't seem scared of anything.

He had no idea where Farfarello might have gone, and so he searched without any particular aim. Usually Farfarello went towards quieter areas, alleys and warehouses and empty nailed-up buildings, somewhere he wouldn't be interrupted. Nagi found a deserted long alley and turned down it, when something shot down from the skies and landed in front of him. Nagi glanced upwards. The man had jumped at least five floors, but landed softly and soundlessly.

"Gravity. The force of attraction between two physical entities. Normally it would be proportional to relative distance and mass, but everything can be manipulated," The man said, unsmiling. He was tall and cruelly handsome, with sharp high cheekbones and a long sleek ponytail the same jet black as his skin and eyes. His voice was smooth and cultured, with a slight accent that Nagi couldn't place- maybe French or Russian or Hungarian, and probably none of them at all.

"Oh," Nagi said. "It's you,"

"Your girlfriend," Demetrius said. "She isn't what you think,"

"What is she?"

"A potential Pandora's Box. The Bringer of the Last Judgement. A concept beyond the current limitations of human understanding. Omega and Doomsday and the Apocalypse. Do you understand me, Prodigy?"

"No," Nagi said. "Mainly because you're talking nonsense. What do you want?"

The man paced around him. "We don't want to hurt you, necessarily. There's no reason why we can't be allies. Your team and ours go together far better than you realise,"

"We're doing fine on our own, thank you," Nagi replied stiffly.

"You're an exceptional agent, but you're fifteen years old, Nagi," Demetrius said. His eyes were strangely hypnotic. "Do you really think you can manage without the Oracle? I knew him myself. He was a fine leader,"

Nagi jumped slightly at the use of the past tense.

"Yes," Demetrius said regretfully. "Just this afternoon, I believe. As I said, a fine leader. I bore him no malice. But there are plenty out there who did, and feel much the same way about yourself, the Berserker and the Schrient girl. She's dangerous, Prodigy. She could end up hurting others, or herself,"

"We have no reason to trust you," Nagi said simply. He walked straight past the gravitakinetic and carried on his way, the air pre-emptively flattening and rippling with telekinesis around him. Not quite a threat, just a slight warning.

"Go and think about it," Demetrius called after him. There was no sound, but when he glanced back, the Eszet agent was gone.

It didn't take him long to find Farfarello, just three streets away in a warehouse. There were no outward signs that he was there. No noises, no more of the screaming or snapping or rendering noises that would have taken place earlier, no blood spattered outside the building, but after a few years working with Schwarz, Nagi knew his team well and the places they would be drawn to. He already knew the place would look like a slaughterhouse, and he was thankful that there were loose, frayed wires visible around the light switches, and what looked like aerosols packed into the storage boxes. It would be easy to destroy the evidence, and no one would question the fire's origins too much.

There was one small red mark just within the doorway where someone had their skull fractured against the wall, and then a trail of spattered blood drops leading deeper into the warehouse, surrounded by boxes and crates that had fallen from the shelves. Whoever had came this way had still been struggling. Nagi made an irritated noise and began to pick his way after them. If Farfarello had bothered to bring his victims in this far alive, then there wasn't much chance he'd have killed them quickly or cleanly. He turned into one of the aisles, and found him.

It was impossible to say how many corpses were there. From past experience, Nagi would guess probably only three or four, but that was thirty or forty pints of blood to spill, and that could go a long way when they were torn apart into too many pieces to ever put back together. The warehouse was lit with unforgiving, harsh white electricity, and underneath it the blood looked as velvety and smooth as syrup. It had pooled in the aisle, some of the piled boxes turning soft with damp and spilling out their contents. Most of the remains were still here- snapped bone, a jumble of wet open organs, someone's eye floating sightlessly. Beyond that, bloody handprints and bright spatters like scarlet fireworks and flowers marked the walls every so often, a trail of discarded parts scattered along the way, and Farfarello at the very end of the aisle.

"It doesn't feel the same," Farfarello said, sounding a little frustrated.

"Farfarello?" Nagi began walking towards him, using his telekinesis to float over the worst of the blood, then stopped a few metres away. He didn't particularly fear his teammate. Farfarello had never shown any inclination to hurt Nagi before, and he could be held off telekinetically anyway. But he was also unpredictable, and could move frighteningly fast when he wanted to.

Farfarello gave Nagi an oddly disconnected, dreamy smile. There was a dim, uneasy glow in his single amber eye, not the usual satiated look he had after a kill. He had isolated three identical large triangular bones that looked to have been part of a spinal cord once.

"The sacrum," Farfarello said, picking one up and turning it over, the bone still picked with strings of flesh and sinew, not yet the smooth white colour it would turn with age. "The name comes from Latin for sacred, or holy. They say it's the only part of a human that cannot be destroyed, and that when the Second Coming occurs, the rest of the body will reassemble around it during resurrection," He snapped the bone. "This one won't come back,"

"It's just part of the spine," Nagi said flatly. He recognised the fused vertebrae from a human biology course he had once taken, passed with near full marks and then lost all interest in. There was no chance he'd ever be able to pursue that sort of career anyway, not with the gift locked up in his head.

"There's a little truth in it," Farfarello corrected. "Due to its size, it usually is amongst the last bones to decay,"

"Schuldig is dead," Nagi repeated.

Farfarello gave him a strange, unreadable look. "I know that," He said, and stood fluidly. "Something's coming," He said, frowning at the pile of triangular bones and then walking past Nagi and through the pooled blood, the warehouse exploding into flames as they left.


End file.
